Bruins don't have all the answers just yet

Friday

Apr 4, 2014 at 7:43 PMApr 4, 2014 at 7:47 PM

The Bruins may be pretty certain about where they'll finish in the NHL standings, but it's still going to take the final week of the season to determine their first-round playoff lineup structure and opponent

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

The schedule says it’s Game No. 78 of the regular season, but it’s really another edition of Mystery Theatre.

Is Saturday’s matinee against the Flyers (1:05 p.m., NESN, WBZ-FM/98.5) the day Bruins coach Claude Julien starts resting a key player or two?

Will any light be shed on Julien’s plans to set up defense pairs for the first playoff round?

And who’s that first-round opponent likely to be, anyway?

The issue of rest has been raised more and more as the Bruins inch toward clinching first place in the Eastern Conference (a win over the Flyers would do that) and continue to compete for the No. 1 position overall.

As of Friday afternoon, the B’s were carrying only one extra forward and two spare defensemen, so it’s not like a plane can be chartered to carry a half-dozen players to some place sunny, warm and relaxing. There may not be as much need for that as many think, though.

Yes, the Bruins had an busy month of March, but as they went 15-1-1, Julien steadily reduced their practice schedule and the team’s Olympians were often excused from workouts. (Goalie Tuukka Rask has continued to practice, but his game load has been reduced.)

Julien said before Thursday’s overtime loss at Toronto that “the rest they would get right now, I don’t think, would be beneficial down the road ... but very soon you’re going to see those changes.” With the playoffs not scheduled to begin until April 17, Julien could wait until next week to tell the likes of Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci to take in a game from the press box.

Defense pairs? Still anyone’s guess and a topic for debate. The past week has made it seem as if Chara and Dougie Hamilton will form the shutdown pairing, Torey Krug and Kevan Miller will make up the third pairing, and that there’s still indecision as to whether Matt Bartkowski or Andrej Meszaros will play on the second pairing with Johnny Boychuk.

That’s just how it seems, though. It’s entirely possible that Julien and his staff already know what they’re going to do, but don’t want to tip their hand in advance – either to potential opponents or to their own defensemen.

The identity of the first-round opponent is very interesting and, with this week’s first consecutive losses since Feb. 26-March 1, the Bruins have helped to make it so.

Wednesday’s loss at Detroit put the Red Wings in a much stronger position to grab the first Eastern Conference wild-card slot, increasing the odds that the Wings will be Metropolitan Division champion Pittsburgh’s problem, not Boston’s. One night later at Toronto, the Bruins’ overtime loss made the Leafs a more viable contender for the second wild-card entry – and therefore a possible first-round opponent for the B’s.

This curious way of potentially controlling their first-round destiny continues on Saturday.

The Flyers, who recently seemed safely assured of a second- or third-place finish in the Metropolitan, haven’t scored a goal since the final minute of last Sunday’s game, which the Bruins ultimately won in a shootout. Two straight shutout losses since then put Columbus – also a potential first-round foe for Boston – in position to catch and pass the Flyers.

If that happened, the Flyers would become a wild-card contender, which would change things for Detroit and Toronto – and we haven’t even talked about Washington and New Jersey still taking mathematical chances of qualifying, and therefore meeting the B’s in Round 1, into the weekend.

It’s not like the players ignore all this, but since so many Bruins are about to enter their seventh straight playoff, they know how little sense there is in obsessing over it. They’ve played six first rounds so far; four have gone to seven games (including three in a row), another went to six.

So it’s best to just expect a rugged first round, no matter how the Bruins structure their lineup or whom they end up playing.

“If you plan on being a team that’s going to win the Cup, you have to be ready to play against anybody,” Julien said. “You don’t pick your opposition.”

Mike Loftus may be reached at mloftus@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @MLoftus_Ledger.